A mega-thread on sexual identity language, flawed thinking from many well-meaning conservative and moderate Christian straight folks, and surprising agreements I share with some far-right critics:
One of the most significant ideas impressed upon me during my years at a Reformed seminary was the importance of locating ourselves within a story (this is one of the reasons I eventually became a Catholic, but that is for another thread).
Disconnected facts of theology can only get us so far; we need to be connected to a grander story of God moving in the world, to history, community, context, and culture to make sense of our faith and lives.

This has necessarily shaped my perspective on sexual identity language.
Words like “homosexual” and “same-sex attraction,” “gay” and “Queer” have a history and a context to be taken into account.

I have found it illuminating to contrast the first two words in that list and the last two.
“Homosexual” was explicitly clinical in origin, and “same-sex attraction” found a home in the ex-gay movement. They do not bestow dignity upon sexual minorities; they are, at least in the conservative Christian world, merely admissions of guilt or confessions of sin.
“Gay” was posited as an alternative to the clinical nature and sexual foregrounding of “homosexual,” and “Queer,” before and after it was a slur used by outsiders, was a positive term used for us by us (not everyone likes it, that’s fine, the point still stands).
Words like “homosexual” and “same-sex attraction” are 1) outsider terms and 2) diagnoses; and often serve to separate and isolate sexual minorities.

“Gay” and “Queer” are 1) insider terms and 2) identities which often serve to connect and build community and culture.
“The word ‘homosexual’ is a straight conception of us as sexual. Therefore, we are in a *sexual* category and become a *sexual* minority...rather than an ethnic group, a people! The word ‘gay’ has come to mean..a lifestyle in which we are not just sex machines...”
“...we are whole entities. It is how we live. It is our oppression. It is our Tiffany lamps and our guns. ‘Gay’ is our history, and the history we are just beginning to become.” - Charles P. Thorpe at the National Gay Liberation Front Student Conference in 1970
“Homosexual” and “same-sex attraction” are attempts at disconnected facts, diagnoses that do not bestow dignity.

“Gay” and “Queer” are, or can be, identities that bestow dignity, or invitations into a story, history, community, and culture.
(As a side note, even the fact of homosexuality or same-sex attraction is so much more complex than many think. Take what priest, theologian, and all-around good guy Wes Hill says: “‘being gay’ feels much bigger and multilayered and richer than an attraction to bodies…”
“…than the sin of lust or the proclivity to identify with an in-group. It is a *sensibility*—that’s the word I keep landing on—and one that somehow seems to pervade my personality, shaping the friendships I form…”
This language debate is in one sense very similar to the debate over person-centered language vs. identity-centered language when it comes to autism.

Autistic people often prefer to say “autistic people,” while family and friends often prefer “person with autism.”
Person-centered language posits dignity *in spite of*, while identity-centered language posits dignity *within*. The former depends upon the idea that it would be better if autism or same-sex attraction (complex reality that it is, see parenthetical above) were removed.
Well-meaning people can use person-centered language without knowing exactly what they are implying about their loved ones—that it would be better if the specifics of their experience were stripped from them. This happens all the time with sexual identity language:
“You’re not a gay person, you are a person made in the image of God, with same-sex attraction.”

“Gay culture is sometimes good because it is made by image bearers, not because it is made by gay people.”
Even people who sometimes use the word “gay” can conceive of it as being a small thing, separable from personhood, rather than a large thing, an aspect of identity—when people speak of “being gay” only in terms of confessions of sin, or talk about the danger of “gay identity”.
These people can then end up thinking the primary struggles for gay people are struggles with sexuality or with forces that make it difficult to talk about our sexuality, rather than with a culture that seeks to destroy our community, culture, personhood.
(Another side note: even some sexual minorities across the spectrum of belief tend to think along these lines when it comes to sexuality, and while I disagree with them, I think it is far less destructive than when the same idea is unthinkingly wielded by a straight person).
Ironically, it is oftentimes critics on the far right who understand “being gay” as communal and cultural better than moderates. The far-right critics agree with me that “being gay” is a big thing—they just also think that it is monstrous and evil.
“I am become as it were a monster unto many, but my sure trust is in thee. I let my mouth be filled with thy praise, that I may sing of thy glory and honour all the day long.” - Psalm 71:7-8 as rendered in the Coverdale Psalter
The far-right critics agree with me that emphasizing missiology and contextualization leads inevitably to some of my ideas about engaging LGBTQ+ history, culture, and community—they just conclude even missiology and contextualization is tainted and must be discarded.
Paul, quoting two pagan poets and using their own language to support his theological points in Acts 17:28 (NRSV): “‘For in him we live and move and have our being,’ as even some of your own prophets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.”
To conclude: “being gay/Queer,” for me and many of my friends, is a big thing: a invitation into a history, community, culture—a story. The words “gay” and “Queer” are our words for ourselves; we get the dignity of describing ourselves.
“Being gay/Queer” sends the message that our experience as sexual minorities—our history, our community, our culture, our story—is precisely where God has chosen to meet with us and move in and through us.
“I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story *or stories* do I find myself a part?’” - Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, emphasis mine
also “same-sex attraction” has five syllables and too many s sounds, do you really think I will sound any less gay by attempting to pronounce that
Addendum: perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been in the thread, or perhaps I was sloppy with my language, but I tried not to make my linguistic choices universal (with qualifications like “for me” and “for many of my friends”). I’m not sure I was successful.
Sexual minorities should be free to use the language they feel they need to use to describe their own lives; the history of the words in the thread was meant to support that fundamental idea. If “homo-sexual” or “same-sex attraction” are the words for you…
…please use them. As for me, this thread was an attempt to give some of the rationale for what I cannot do so myself, and why the enforcement of that language upon all sexual minorities can cause harm.
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